Who knows U.S. Navy ranks circa WWII?

Factual Questions
1

I am writing a play that is set on an American Naval Base during World War II, and am having great difficulty finding information on the land-based chain of command.

Does anyone know what ranks/titles the following people would have, or have a direction to point me in to find this information?

  1. The head-honcho of the base.
  2. The person in charge of the military police on the base and/or internal base security.
  3. The lowest possible level military policeman and/or base security person.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

The head honcho of the base is likely a Captain. Which would make your SP boss likely a LT. or LT(jg), but maybe a Commander. The Lowest possible rating for one is probably E4 - Petty Officer 3rd.

3

How big is the base? What do they do there? Whenabouts during WWII? That might have some bearing on the command structure.

4

  1. A base commander is generally an O-6 grade officer, in the Navy’s case that would be a Captain, but it can be higher or lower depending on the installation.

  2. Military Police on a Navy base would technically be Master-at-arms(MA). These are enlisted positions so the highest ranking MA would be E-9 Master Chief; the MA in charge would most likely report directly to the base commander or XO.

  3. I don’t believe there is a minimum rank required, I could be wrong.

5

How big the base is would be key information.

The head honcho of the base would likely be a Captain (O-6), a Commodore (O-7 during WWII), or an Admiral (O-8). But a smaller base might well be commanded by a Commander (O-5).

The SP boss would be an officer, probably a Lt (jg) (O-2) on the small base, or a Lt (O-3) or Lt. Commander (O-4) in the larger base scenario.

If you identified the low-level shore patrol person as a “Petty officer” Master-at-Arms you’d cover a wide range, and be safe, since a Petty Officer Third Class (E-4) and a Petty Officer First Class (E-6) are both “Petty Officer” in casual conversation. Master-at-Arms is the rating that a shore patrol person would have, which is the Navy’s version of military police.

6

Thank you all for your help.

I should mention that this is a romantic comedy, some having an Admiral in charge is probably going to make it easiest for the audience to know who’s who. The main characters are civilians employees brought in to do code-breaking work. (I realize this may be historically inaccurate, but again, it’s a romantic comedy.) Because of this, I’d really prefer the base to be on the West coast of the continental U.S. The size of the base is “as big as it needs to be” to be a home port for a support ship in the Pacific.

7

Naval Base San Diego is the largest base on the West Coast, and is commanded by a Captain. Although during WW2 it was a Repair Base.

8

Even if the base commander is only commander grade (O-5), he would generally be addressed as “Captain” or “Skipper” (more likely the latter) as a matter of respect for the position. For a comedy, something could be made of this situation, with people addressing him as “Commander” and him being peevish about being the “captain” of the “ship”.